Beauty and the Beast
by MidKnight Rider
Summary: No not the Disney one. This is my version of Pon Farr. It's adult and it was intended for adults
1. Chapter 1

**Beauty and the Beast**

**Author notes: **Pon Farr has to be one of the most cryptic things ever invented in the Star Trek Universe, imo. No explanation has ever been given in canon about what Spock does every seven years after it just mysteriously and abruptly ends after Amok Time. Of course, no one ever imagined we'd all still be worried about it forty-four years later. My own personal opinion has always been that T'Pring somehow triggered it through the mental bond that had been forged between them at age 7 and it quite possibly never happened to him again.

My original character makes this an AU, though I did once write her into every known episode of Star Trek, off screen, so it might still work.

My obsession with the Vulcan Science Officer and Vulcan culture in general demanded this be written. Considering the subject matter, it is adult in nature. It was written and intended for adults.

I don't own Star Trek or any of the characters. I just take them out to play every once in a while.

Vulcan, ShiKahr city, Temple of T'Panit

To the casual observer, the couple moving quietly through the cool stone corridors of the Temple of T'Panit looked like any other Vulcan couple. One would have to get much closer to see that the woman walking closely beside the man was not a Vulcan at all. Currently covered from head to toe in deep blue robes, a long golden veil protecting her head from heat and sand, she was indistinguishable from the other Vulcan women seeking spiritual guidance at the temple.

She was not there with her husband seeking spiritual guidance however. In fact, she had no idea why he had brought her there at all.

It was a place of serene and peaceful beauty, emphasized by the melodious chanting of the monks and the trickling of that most Vulcan of miracles – a series of fountains that graced the multiple courtyards. The cool interior and placid order contrasted sharply with the ruined nuclear blasted plain that lay just outside the temple - Vulcan's Forge, the site of the final war before Surak had walked across the Plain of Blood as it still lay washed in emerald green blood and founded a new way of life for Vulcans. The temple had one small balcony that served as an overlook to the Forge. It was the essence of simplicity with one small plaque that said only "Worla Yen-Tor." _Never forget._

But Daphne had been here before, many times as a child growing up on Vulcan and learning its history. She knew only that Spock had not brought her here for a history lesson. She already knew more than the average "outworlder" and was, for all intents and purposes, _d'velnahr_ – Vulcan by choice.

She followed him in silence through the public areas of the temple, finally winding their way back to a tall set of doors made out of another Vulcan miracle – wood. It opened on huge iron hinges and Spock carefully closed it and keyed a privacy setting into a modern device totally at odds with the ancient setting. He then led her into the hidden courtyard.

Shaded, graced by a small pool, potted plants and plants that hung from the delicate system of lacy girders that served as an open roof, it was a place that could inspire a sense of peace in anyone. But Spock hardly paused to let her admire the intricate beauty of this desert oasis, and he did not seem at all peaceful. In fact, he seemed almost "shut down", the empathy between them blocked. She normally basked in his presence. But whatever it was she normally basked in was just not _there. _'The Great Wall of Vulcan,' Jim had once called it, a place deep inside Spock into which he retreated.

Though she respected his need for privacy, Daphne often hated that wall.

He took her to a small sunken garden. Raised garden beds surrounded it, stone stairs led down into it. An enormous statue carved from some kind of dark stone dominated it. A few feet in front of the statue was a meditation platform. Carefully placed candles illuminated the statue and the steps.

Spock turned so that they faced the statue. His thoughts were still closed to her, his face as impassive as she had ever seen it. Yet…. Something of ancient Vulcan simmered in his eyes. Finding no clue to their purpose here from him, Daphne studied the statue.

She was first drawn to the figure on the platform. It was the exquisite form of a sleeping woman, quite naked, disheveled hair pushed back from upswept eyebrows and delicately pointed ears. Even with her eyes closed and what seemed to Daphne to be the softest of contented smiles on her face, the sculptor had embodied in her serene strength, a celebration of life. She was at peace.

And finally she looked at the other figure, crouched in front of the platform on which the woman slept. It was a snarling beast with a huge cat-like head with large backswept ears and a deep V carved into its forehead. The shoulders and body were massive, full of deeply carved muscles and sinew. The sculptor had created a decidedly male body that left nothing to the imagination in some places and appeared to be a blend of human and animal characteristics. It might have been a were-cat out of Terran mythology, or a creature that had somehow melded man and lematya. Its mouth was open in defiance, showing long serrated pointed teeth. One paw was raised, lethal claws unsheathed. Glittering black eyes of polished gems challenged whoever approached.

From the point of view of xenobiology, Daphne knew this was no creature that existed in nature. As an archaeologist she was curious as to the age and history of this place and this statue. As art she found it breathtaking.

Beside her, Spock seemed to withdraw even more, unsettled, his bedrock certainty compromised. He drew a long ragged breath and swallowed before speaking.

"What do you think of him?"

It was not the question she expected so she looked again at the blatantly male animal. Finally she answered, in her voice that, to him, was always like the soothing summer rain. "He's magnificent."

She waited, gave him the time she sensed he needed. She was uncertain but it seemed her answer reassured him.

"Do you understand what this represents?" he asked her finally.

She shook her head and the silence lengthened between them. Daphne had no choice but to wait. This was something deeply Vulcan, something that she had not been privileged to know as part of her education, even though she had been raised on Vulcan. She pushed the veil from her head to take advantage of the garden's coolness, revealing the golden hair that flowed over her shoulders and down her back. Spock looked at her then, down into molten gold eyes, and felt as if he was losing his balance in too many ways. He carded the fingers of one hand through her hair, pausing a moment to watch the flickering candle light play off the pale caramel colored strands. D'velnahr she may be, but in so many ways she was hopelessly alien to his world. Suddenly she seemed too small and vulnerable to bear the task he would lay before her.

"Spock whatever it is, just tell me," she wanted to touch him but he seemed suddenly too brittle. Her voice was pleading, aching, "Your thoughts and feelings are completely hidden from me, as never before. I am not sure where you are but it isn't here with me. I'm not talking about your normal boundaries, or even your inner barriers. Those I recognize and respect. This is more like a solid wall, between us. I am not sure you're aware of it, and it is your right of course. Your thoughts are always your own and no one else's. But it is…. difficult for me. We're about to be married, for the third time, and yet it is almost as if I have lost you, every part of you. What is this? What does this represent to Vulcans? What is this place?"

He swallowed again and said so softly she almost didn't hear him, "Pon Farr. The plak-tow."

Since he was shielding his thoughts and emotions from her, Daphne had no idea of the gut-wrenching, visceral reaction Spock had to the image. It was as if someone had stripped him of his skin and his Vulcan discipline, even his human heritage, and lay bare what he had been under it all, exactly seven years ago.

In the course of his relationship with Daphne, he had once ripped the hatch of a sealed airlock out of its housing to get to her. He had picked up an Orion pirate –twice the mass and height of a Vulcan and intent at the time on kidnapping his wife - hurled him into a bulkhead hard enough to dent it and nearly strangled him with one hand. He knew firsthand the destruction he was capable of inflicting.

"You…" he paused, seeking control, "You should be grateful for the wall between us. I won't inflict on you emotions I can barely control myself. I am not sure either of us will be able to control it, _k'diwa. _The blood fever has been known to burn everything in its path.Even now I feel it beginning. I do not want to ask this of you – to break the laws of love in the name of biology."

"But I do love you," she said, quietly. His eyes opened wider and then narrowed again. She went on, "I've always loved you. You have no idea how hard it was being torn between telling you that, all those years ago, letting my guard down, admitting to myself how I felt – or risk losing you forever. I remember with clarity how precious those few moments were that I could be alone with you, in the beginning," she paused, breathing slowly. Her scattered thoughts struggled for voice. "Now, after being sealed to you for so long, having lived in your thoughts…. To be locked out of your life even for a moment…." She reached for his hand, her eyes locked with his, "I am yours. I surrendered to you long ago and not even you can change that. I entered into a bond with you as a symbol of ultimate trust. Do with it what you will. But whatever you are experiencing, I would rather go through it with you than watch from a distance. It is my right as your bond mate to go through it with you. My strength, my control, is yours and always will be. I am _not_ grateful for this wall. I am never grateful for it."

He freed his hand from hers only to wrap strong fingers around her wrist and pull her close to him. The heat of his Vulcan body seared through her robes.

She knew that was why they were on Vulcan and was suddenly angry at herself for being so dense. While she had been caught up in the plans for the _kal-i-farr_ – the Vulcan marriage ceremony – Spock had been caught in the knowledge that soon the entire chemistry of his brain would alter and he would lose all control. While she had been trying not to fail his parents and his culture, she failed the one person who was more important than anyone else – Spock.

She focused now on him, and on what he wanted her to know. The statue stood before her like a challenge. It would be easy to assume the beast was guarding prey; that it was about to shred the helpless female. It would be easy to assume the woman should fear the beast.

The message of the statue was in its small details: the façade presented by the serene gardens on the exterior, the need to walk down into shadow lit only deliberately by hand, the hint of smile on the woman's face indicating that she was safe and content, the way her hand rested trustingly on the shoulder of the beast, the way the crouched body sheltered and protected her. She was turned towards the beast, open in her assurance and belief. Daphne looked into the face of the beast and saw the snarl of defense, of guardianship, of desire and _need._ This woman belonged to him and he would defend her with his life. Within her she responded in a way that was not wholly logical. What she felt was a deep, primal reaction from the dawn of time, an attraction to the male who would throw himself between his mate and danger.

Daphne turned back to Spock and stepped ever closer to him, reached for him. He caught her wrists and held her hands at her side, not allowing her to touch him further.

"Will you be able to look into those eyes," he canted his head towards the Beast, "and still see me?"

"I have been unable to see past the wall between us and yet I still see only you. _Kaiidth, ashayah'm._ Spock, _let me in,_" She softly begged.

He let go of her wrists, spread his fingers in a V-shape as he cradled her head between his hands. Her hair threaded through his fingers, his fingertips tingled against her scalp as he opened the link between them once again. Her thoughts flowed into his, cool and silken, as his ran into hers molten with desire. In all his complexity, all his light and shadow, all the reconciliations he had to make between his two worlds, everything that made him the unique and powerful individual he was, Daphne loved him. She looked at him fully and fearlessly, seeing him for everything he _was. _

Her hand found the back of his neck, pulled him down for a kiss. Her mouth opened under his and passion mixed with a strange kind of reverence and innocence. She melted under him. He broke the kiss and looked down and his eyes devoured, hot and hungry.

His arms closed around her as she slipped hers around his waist, laid her head against him. He wanted to stay there the rest of his life. He held her, held onto her as his lifeline, his anchor, his northern star. As long as he had _her _he would be all right. Daphne reached for his hand and paired her first two fingers with his, pressing hard, linking the rest of their fingers tightly.

Wordlessly, he took her to a small bench set into a niche on the wall. He sat down with his back against the side, his knee against the back of it, and drew her down to sit within the circle of his legs. Her back settled against his chest, her head beneath his chin. She rested her head against the folds of his robe in the hollow of his shoulder. He laced the fingers of one hand together with the fingers of one of hers. For a moment they simply sat in silence, watching the light change as Vulcan's sun gave way to the reflected light of T'Khut.

She whispered at last, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know, what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offence,"she waited a moment to look up at him pointedly before finishing the quote,"Something is there that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down."

"Robert Frost, _The Mending Wall_," Spock immediately identified the source_,"_I did not mean to offend you,_ k'diwa_."

"You didn't offend me," she replied. "It just seems an appropriate poem at the moment."

He paused, one eyebrow slowly rising and humor came to light in his warm, expressive eyes, briefly drowning the desire, "The next line does speak of 'elves?'"

Daphne laughed then, like the shimmer of water in the fountains, and continued, "I could say 'elves' to him," she turned to lightly trace one finger along the delicate upsweep of his ear to the sensitive point, ending the quote on a whisper, "But it's not elves exactly."

She tilted her face up and was simply too irresistible not to kiss again. He pulled the clip from the back of her head and let all of her hair tumble out in a wild cascade of golden highlights. They kissed, slowly, chaste and gentle, while he let those heavy silky strands glide through his fingers.

By the end of the week, Spock had stopped eating.


	2. Chapter 2

He braced his hands on the wall and closed his eyes.

_Breathe,_ he thought, fiercely, _just breathe._

How did any Vulcan male ever do this the first time? Perhaps if he had been younger, the primal urges would have been enough to push him past the doubts and uncertainties. Perhaps if he were not half human and hadn't worked so hard at control of emotion and primitive desires. Perhaps it would be easier if the woman waiting for him didn't mean so much to him, if she were nothing more than a body in which to slake his heat.

She had married him three times at this point – the first time by their Captain in the chapel of the Enterprise in a simple earth ceremony; the second on Thrace, where cool breezes has blown across azure seas and across the courtyard of her family home and hundreds of her relatives and family friends had cheered and feasted and danced for days in their honor.

Just the day before she had willingly braved the blistering heat and sands of his ancestral ceremonial lands, where countless generations of his clan had submitted to the Vulcan marriage ceremony. She had stood within the rugged stones, looking out at the sweeping red sky, the tan and ocher colored expanse of dessert and the russet mountains in the distance and spoken the traditional vows to him in flawless, unaccented Vulcan. Several hundred members of his clan had attended, which had shocked him at first. He suspected that either T'Pau or Sarek had put pressure on them to attend; or they were all curious to see another serious break with tradition courtesy of their most rebellious member. The presence of some many other males had nearly driven him beyond endurance, though her eyes had only been for him.

Daphne had willingly opened to the permanent mental link to him, the bond that existed for just this reason. Now she was the only one whose body would suffice, the one whose psychic 'scent' he now craved. Perhaps if he did not need sex for his own sake or if he had not spent the last seven years wondering what this was like when allowed to reach its logical conclusion; or if he had not shut himself away from her for the past few hours, just long enough to work himself into a panic…..

He had been with Daphne for nearly six and half years. According to Federation law he had been married to her for the last three years. He knew dozens and dozens of ways to kiss, to caress, to arouse her and make her crave him. He knew ways to have her clinging to him desperately; convulsing in pleasure over and over, and crying out to gods she didn't believe in.

He couldn't think of a single one.

He could barely think at all. In spite of hours of meditation he'd hope would ready him, he had been unprepared for the physical pain when it finally fired along every nerve ending. His carefully crafted control and mental shielding had collapsed like a house of sticks. _ Plak-tow,_ the blood fever, had lain dormant in him for seven years. It now came boiling out like a nest of disturbed vipers.

Fury struck him like an avalanche and changed him into something hot and violent. He wanted to break furniture, smash bones and draw blood. He understood the need for seclusion now. Another male would simply be a rival to be eliminated, instantly, without thought. Any other female but the one he had chosen would jar against raw nerve, risking a temper already wild and unpredictable. A Vulcan male seized by plak-tow had enough sexual energy for a dozen women, but would want only one – and that one would be the focus of all his attention.

The mental and physical pain had raked over him. Rising desire, usually so pleasurable, had turned into something brutal, a destructive imperative. He'd had to struggle to stay off the floor. Helpless in the face of millennia of Vulcan biology, the slender thread of fragile order he had brought to his mind disintegrated in a fraction of a second. In that blazing second the Vulcan façade of conquering emotion seemed hopelessly naïve and heartbreakingly unattainable. Certainly they had never found a way to conquer this.

He wrestled uselessly against the pain, taking gasping, sobbing breaths. Agony spread across his body and settled between his legs. The overwhelming _need_ drove him to his kneesand he slumped helplessly against a wall. It _must _end. There had to be relief, _there had to be. _Wave after crashing wave….

_Daphne…._

"Control," he growled, his jaw tight, "_Control!"_

The tidal wave of desire pulled him deeper towards the bottom of the sexual whirlpool in which he was drowning. _Daphne…_ His love for her, his _fear_ for her struggled to surface.

It didn't matter. He must be free of this unending, heavy, relentless pain. His body was going to destroy him. His world dissolved into flame.

_Mate or die… Daphne….k'diwa…_


	3. Chapter 3

_DAPHNE! _

The desperate wail cut across her with no warning, ripped at her empathic awareness. It was not her name exactly. But it was the image Spock held of her in his mind, transformed now into a mental shriek of agony, reaching out to her as the only source of help. He had blocked her for the last several hours, attempting to meditate, to bring some order out of the chaos created by the blood fever beginning to smolder in his body. Unprotected and unready for the sudden onslaught, she stumbled, dropped the dish she was carrying so that it shattered on the cold slate floor. She caught herself on the counter to keep from falling.

All of her life, speaking the Vulcan language, she had been taught that _shon-ha-lok_ – the Engulfment – referred to 'love at first sight', an instant attraction or recognition. Well it did. But it was much more. Shon-ha-lok, Spock had told her, was the reaction of a bond mate to Pon Farr. If she allowed it, she would feel all that he felt, be brought instantly to the same state of burning desire and need him as desperately as he needed her, though without the threat to her life.

Opening to him, she was suddenly part of his body, inside his skin, gasping for breath with his lungs. Her own heart hammered somewhere beneath her left breast, and his pounded lower on her right side. She couldn't get enough air. The accelerated heart beating on her right side was going to break and take her with it. She was on fire with a lust she had never experienced. Their bond drew her to the only thing that would slake it.

Drawing on her empathic training, the strength of her bond and just plain sheer determination, she gathered herself and ran down the hall towards their room. Stone floors were cool beneath her bare feet, soft breezes plucked at her short robe as if nature itself wanted her to shed it.

She had just gotten out of a shower. Her hair was damp and wild. Beneath the light robe she wore nothing at all. It suited the hot, feral seduction that was sweeping over her.

She found Spock on his knees, curled over, his fingers dug into his thighs. He looked more like someone who was going to be violently sick than a man driven to arousal beyond thought or caring.

He shook his head, eyes fixed on the floor, "_No! Stay away."_

Daphne froze. She barely recognized his voice, certainly didn't recognize Spock's usually warm, expressive gaze in the eyes that finally looked up at her filled with cold fury and hot lust. There was nothing of Vulcan peace or pacifism left to him. She looked away, uncertain what his reaction to direct eye contract would be. Her eyes fell on the shattered remains of the computer station that had once been in the corner.

It was in a million twisted pieces. Even the desk was mutilated beyond recognition, metal sheered into splinters. Vulcan strength, Vulcan rage. Dear _gods._ She swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat and refused to tremble.

Instead she forced every muscle in her body to relax and stood passively. Fast movements would do neither of them any good. She knew not to offer resistance or refuse him. Driven by the shon-ha-lok she was not inclined to refuse him.

And she wasn't obeying an order to leave him. There was nothing of disciplined Star Fleet officers between them now.

"No, _k'diwa_, we both know I'm not leaving" she murmured.

"_Go!_" he snarled in desperation,"_ Before I take you where you stand_!"

Daphne held the glazed wild eyes of the man she loved and calmly repeated, "I'm not leaving."

He stared at her, drawing fierce, ragged breaths, almost sobbing. Then he uncoiled with predatory speed and had her body pressed hard against him, both her hands trapped behind her back in one of his. The fingers of his other hand threaded through her hair, pulled her head up so that she could look into his eyes – into the eyes of the beast, hot, and feral with lust. His hand tightened on her wrists and she gasped.

She looked up into the barely contained violence that was in his eyes, undaunted, unafraid. She understood then. He'd given her one last chance to refuse.

"Spock," she breathed, "Let go. You're going to break my wrist."

Instantly the pressure loosened, but he did not let go. Using the greater power of his body he propelled her backwards against the wall. She didn't resist. A sound that was part whimper and part possessive growl left his throat. The fist holding her hair relaxed as he cupped her head instead. His mouth came down on hers. She had expected it to be brutal, so the extreme tender longing in it shocked her. Some of the pain receded and was replaced with burning desire. He kissed her as if there was nothing more they needed to do, nothing more he wanted; a long, slow, gentle kiss in which his tongue played with hers.

Willingly, her mouth opened to him and allowed each sweet stroke of his tongue to turn her body into molten fire. She was almost desperate to touch him now, fighting against the restraint. The shon-ha-lok roared through her.

"Let go," she said, again, moving her wrists. He hesitated, as reluctant to release his hold on her as a drowning man would be to release a life ring. She pressed her hips forward, brushed against him. He gasped in pain and something else. Fear? He closed his eyes and he shuddered in a way that confirmed her suspicion. Daphne had seen and felt many things from Spock during the time they had been together. She had never gotten the slightest impression of fear.

But he was afraid now.

Of what she had no idea. She thought perhaps it was of his own strength. She knew what his strength, unleashed, could do to fragile human flesh and bone. Every time he had ever touched her, she had been aware of the restraint, the steel control.

In honesty, they both lived in their human halves for most of their daily existence. She understood his determined and monumental effort at wholeness, of finding "self" in the labyrinth of hybrid nature. It was a battle she engaged in as well.

The Thracian in her was capable of being neither safe nor civilized. She met his fierce desert-bred passion with an equal ferocity of her own, born of pioneers who had hacked a culture out of the heat of the Thracian jungles, born of a people who could not hide their emotions from each other and sometimes did not bother to try.

Her voice dropped to a low seductive promise, reassuring, willing. "Let go. Let me touch you. I want to touch you."

That got his attention. Her hands were freed, but he kept one arm around her waist. She made good her promise, pushing away his robe, off his shoulders, letting it fall forgotten in a pool at their feet. Her long nails whispered over his heated, shivering skin, downward to his groin, encircling the silk-clad shaft of steel she found there. It arched and throbbed wildly with his heartbeat.

His skin felt exactly like the raging liquid fire building inside her, hot even for a Vulcan. She unbelted her robe and shrugged it off her shoulders, his eager hands helped it fall.

Spock was panting, gasping, drawing one ragged and sobbing breath after another. Her heart was pounding now almost to match his. She slid her hands up his back to his shoulders and pressed closer to him. His fever branded her, every breath rubbed her breasts against his chest, teasing and arousing. He was trembling violently, on the verge of taking her just as violently.

With another possessive growl he swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed. Her legs hit the edge of the bed as she fell backwards, opened as she pulled him down.

_Oh gods, yes._ Her mind voice caressed him as he brought them together in one long savage stroke.

It was like food after starvation, water after unbearable thirst, the first breath of air after the crushing pressure of vacuum. He rocked up against her, hard and she moved to meet him, ground her body against him, sheathed that silky solid steel. She thrashed, wanting to hold him, but he was staying slightly above, holding himself up with one strong arm while the other hand stroked and explored her. Cool against her heated skin, his hand slid up and over, parting and teasing, and stroking sensitive places in a way she would allow no one else.

Her nails dug into his shoulders and he hissed through clenched teeth. Below him, breathless gasps turned into deep moans. Her body went rigid, her back arched, muscles shuddering and locking. She cried out and he growled, his breath hot and harsh on her shoulder, as wet heat crushed him, pulsed over him in strength and sweet raging wildfire.

Then he did pull her close, gathered her in his arms and thrust madly until he erupted, explosively, his head buried against her neck and shoulder, groaning so low it vibrated through both of them.

Spock felt as if he had been pulled back from the edge of a precipice, caught in free fall, shattered and rebuilt. He had enough fractional awareness to force his body to fall sideways so that he didn't crush her. Then it was as if someone had struck him from behind. He went blank. His ears were ringing, he couldn't see. He was stripped raw. The light and air in the room had texture and weight on his skin.

He began to shake forcibly, his body involuntarily seizing with the rush of adrenaline. He was vaguely aware that Daphne was moving, gathering him to her, and tucking his head under her chin to hold him tight. She gently stroked his hair, rocked him.

Language and coherent thought returned with slow reluctance. He stopped trembling and awareness came back. He reached tentatively across his mind link to his wife.

She was sated, content, though certainly not exhausted. In fact she seemed still aroused and filled with a distinctly feminine awareness of him.

He felt more like the survivor of a disaster than a sated lover.

"Are you all right?" she asked gently. Her throat felt raw, dry as the desert beyond the summer house. Vulcan's arid climate often sapped her after any kind of movement. The heat could she usually bear. The equatorial regions of her biological Homeworld often reached temperatures that rivaled a Vulcan summer. But the lack of humidity was still difficult.

A shaky sigh was her only answer. He untangled from her and dropped onto his back. He tried to open his eyes, but the room swam and made him dizzy so he closed them again.

"I do not know," he rasped.

Privately, she acknowledged his hesitation. He had told her this could take hours, or possibly days. As with all things that had to do with his mixed up hybrid anatomy, he had no way of knowing. He had explained that to her, early in their relationship. She needed to know exactly what she was getting herself into. Her response, from the point of view of a consummate scientist, was to remind him that the African Lion of earth, as well as the Lamatya of Vulcan, mated every fifteen minutes for two weeks every two years; and that was only one example of such things being common in nature. It was to the credit of his Vulcan training that he managed to squash the initial feeling of horror he'd felt. He had no interest in using his wife in such a manner.

At the moment, Daphne had stretched out beside him and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. She seemed quite content to let him use her in whatever manner was necessary.

"Spock, _kaiidth. _ I am yours," she told him, stroking her fingers from his shoulder to his hip. "Do whatever you need."

Spock trembled again. He released just enough of the stranglehold he had on their psychic connection to show her the blood fever still coiled inside, the spark waiting only for his body to recover before bursting once again into consuming flame. Her hand moved from his hip to his groin and found him not as sated as his climax would have suggested he should be. She nuzzled gently against his neck, reassuring, understanding that this had bought them time but not yet his life.


	4. Chapter 4

With lightening speed he reached down and clamped his hand over her wrist. His body tensed like a trapped animal. Murderous volcanic rage filled his eyes again.

"Don't tease," he begged, his voice sounded like something from the Abyss, "I can't control…."

Daphne winced as she realized her wrist was bruised, which of course Spock realized in the same instance along what existed of their telepathic link. He sat up abruptly, alert. He lifted her hand, looked at the dark, rising impression of his fingers in her pale gold flesh. He closed his eyes and shuddered. Finding his voice again he said, "I have… no wish to hurt you."

"You won't," she whispered, with no hesitation.

"I already have," he pointed out.

"If you had held onto me while I pulled you back from a cliff, it would leave marks too."

He looked into her eyes again and she saw Spock there. But she also saw the beast lurking in the darkness.

"Spock," she murmured, "It's all right."

His forehead furrowed and he swallowed hard again. More of the beast crept into his face, encouraged by her closeness and that delicious smile. His breathing became shallow. She sensed the change in him even before he touched her, running his hand from her neck to her breasts, pausing to lightly caress. His touch was always warm, like a summer wind coming in from the desert. Now it felt as if the fire of Vulcan's Forge had settled in his fingertips.

The effect on her was electrifying. But Vulcan took its toll on outworlders.

"Wait, love," she pleaded, in the calm level tone Star Fleet trained its officers to use when negotiating with a hostile party, "I have to drink something."

He was instantly out of bed and across the room to the small cooler set into the wall. He would have granted her anything in his current state, so long as she stayed with him. He stepped over the ruined remains of the computer station as if he didn't even notice it.

But it gave her a chance to actually look at him, all of him, for the first time since she had come into the room. His back was to her for the moment, as he rummaged in the cooler for water. She watched the muscles flex and ripple. Tall, slender, all defined muscle and contained masculine strength, his body rippled with grace and power when he moved. His skin had turned an astonishingly beautiful dusky green-bronze. He reminded her, as always, of the statues of the ancient Vulcan gods she had once seen at the museum in ShiKahr.

He was Vulcan in a Vulcan world.

By the time he had returned to bed with a bottle of water, her mouth and throat were drier than when he had left. Heat and desire pooled in her. Her heart hammered with a deep erotic pulse.

The entire length of his body slid along hers as he lay back down. He was taut as the drawn strings on his ka'athyra and hard again. Deep in the Engulfment, an answering rush beat in her lower body in response. He watched her drink from the bottle and realized her own dark gold eyes were almost black with lust. His hand closed on her hip and pulled her up against him.

"Gods, you are so beautiful," she murmured against his mouth. Her hand went to the back of his head, urging him down.

"I think….I'm supposed to tell you that," he whispered, kissing her lips, her forehead, her eyelids. Somehow he had gone back to the slow, lazy kisses that implied they had nothing better to do, making her feel weightless.

His hand trailed lightly along the curves of her body, traced the swell of her breasts, down over the gentle curve of her hips. She was flawless to him, golden in the midmorning light, somehow more than perfection.

The blood fever thundered in him again, demanding, assaulting him, and threatening once again to end his life if not satisfied. His heart rate and blood pressure built to lethal levels. The fire had been banked but still threatened to burn him out from the inside.

_Control, _he ordered his traitorous body; and it ignored him.

The plak-tow was trying to kill him again. The agony could not be endured.

"Daphne," he growled now, in his deep, vibrant voice. His breath was cool against her fevered temple in spite of the heat in his tone and the urgency of his body. His fingers stroked her thigh, slipped higher, teased her delicately, slick with her own readiness.

She finished drinking and let the bottle fall somewhere on the floor behind her. She felt the loss of his control even before he rolled over onto his back, pulling her with him. He sat up and settled her across his thighs as she sheathed him. His eyes briefly drifted closed as the heated honey of her body closed around him.

_Shon-ha-lok. _The Engulfment. It could mean many things. His body vibrated with need. He wrapped an arm around her hips to keep her still while the other hand slid through her dark blond mane and cupped her head. Then he demanded a kiss again. She braced her hands on his shoulders and found the small half-moon nicks her nails had left earlier. What should have inspired guilt only served to inflame her further.

She whimpered against his kiss, tried to move but he kept her hips pinned.

"_Please_," she begged, when they broke apart, breathless." Take me. Let me give you what you need."

_NOW! The fire in his blood demanded._

He let her go, dropping his hands to her waist, fingers spanning her rib cage. She moved on him with rapid urgency. Never had he known a climax to overtake her so quickly. She rocked against him as wave after wave of pleasure rippled over her body. He sought to prolong it, timing his thrusts to her crushing spasms.

It was too much. He stiffened, shuddered. The willing body into which he plunged held the key to his very existence. It was both rapture and torment. The pleasure was indescribable, almost as beyond endurance as the pain; as overwhelming in its intensity as the fear and danger they were counteracting.

He poured into her, crying out, giving her that most sacred of Vulcan gifts – liquid. His body was willing to grant him the ability to gasp for air only as the offering of fluid jetted from it: an offering he gave in exchange for his life.

Because that was all that was at stake here – his life. Gratitude flowed into her along with his climax. For a moment his vision blurred and he nearly lost consciousness again.

Like a slow motion rock slide they tumbled over, sprawling over each other. As he slid from her body he had the oddest feeling of being bereft and abandoned, even as she pressed her back tight to his chest and curled up in his arms. He buried his face in her hair, inhaled the soft rain-drenched scent of it and wondered if he would ever breathe normally again.

Daphne became aware that they were lying down, spooned against him. But she had no real clear idea how they had gotten there. She reached behind her until her hand came to rest on the back of his neck and simply let it rest there, lightly stroking the ends of his hair.

Gingerly she reached for him telepathically as well. Vulcan telepathy was singularly dynamic. Once joined two minds worked as one, so she approached him with great caution.

She found him mentally and physically drained. His body still shook slightly, as if he had been hit by lightening. She could sense the blood fever still simmering just below the limit of his control. Her free hand sought his and she laced her fingers with his, holding tightly to anchor him to her presence.

"I'm here, ashayah'm," she whispered.

The only answer he gave was a long, ragged sigh.


	5. Chapter 5

It had become a bit like triage for Daphne as she tried to gauge what he needed next – food, water, sleep or sex – all the while tamping down the pounding sexual need he could now effortlessly raise in her.

They spent countless hours together with his temper shifting from a killing edge to raw, raging sexual hunger. He played with her without mercy, driving her up and up until at times her entire world narrowed to the feeling of his body and hers. They feasted on each other's arousal and climaxes almost to the exclusion of all else, until they would collapse exhausted and wrung dry.

Sleep was caught in restless snatches, in ways she had never seen before. Usually he slept stone-still, hardly breathing. She wasn't even sure it was "sleeping" so much as putting himself into a coma for three or four hours every few days. She had finally had to beg him to at least close both eyelids so he didn't look so much like he had died.

Now he would just collapse. Fine tremors slid through him, causing him to twitch at times like an animal chasing its prey while it slept; and sometimes when he finally woke only the glittering black eyes of the beast looked out at her.

While she had managed to eat while he slept, Spock had barely eaten and still snarled at the suggestion of food. Proteins and vitamins she sneaked past him by mixing the powdered versions into a frosted dairy drink known on earth as a 'milkshake'. Chocolate, she knew, had a restorative effect on Vulcans. He had eyed it warily the first time she had presented it, shaking his head, breathing hard, and reaching for her, trying to pull her down on top of him again.

"No," she said, firmly, evading the tactile sorcery of his fingertips before they were both mindlessly lost. "This first, then me."

He had all but bared his teeth and lunged at her. But Daphne had no fear of the beast and held her ground. Spock finally took it and downed it in hot, fast swallows.

As his reward, she took him and did the same thing.

The next time she made him a milkshake he had not been as reluctant. While it was a unique experience in their relationship, she'd discovered being able to lead him around by his cock currently had its advantages.

She just had to keep shielding the pulse pounding desires created by the time of Pon Farr. Since her own natural reaction to Spock was often blazing desire at the most inappropriate times it took very little to spark the same fever in her blood.

At one point she realized that Spock had gone for days without water, pushing the limit even for the Vulcan's desert-bred physiology. For a Vulcan who was currently expending fluid, in copious amounts, over a period of hours, it was something she knew he could not sustain. Knowing also that his body would naturally absorb water if she could get him to stand in it, she had coaxed him into the shower – where he had simply lifted her up to match his height, held her against the wall and brought them to mindless ecstasy with deep, savage strokes as the water had washed over them. She had been glad the summer home was isolated in its northern mountain retreat. Their combined cries had echoed off the stone walls and probably been heard for miles.

Since Spock had lifted her into the middle of his bed three nights previous, there was hardly a surface, horizontal or vertical, in his family's summer home that they had not used at some point. The only place that was off limits was the private rooms at the back of the house that belonged to Sarek and Amanda. Other than that, they had used the floors, the courtyard (which had a convenient double lounge chair she wisely chose not to remark on), the furniture, and the table (which had been swept clean with one stroke of his arm and meant that several expensive plates had to be replace now). In the beginning, Daphne had sensed from him an odd combination of desperate arousal and revulsion. He had been both overcome by lust and sickened by it. Over the course of their days together, he had lost some of the negative emotions.

Perhaps he had learned to embrace the beast and perhaps her acceptance of it had helped. Perhaps he had just so deeply descended into the _plak-tow_ that he could not fight it any more. He had long ago concluded that his body's resistance to Pon Farr had in part been triggered by his human component and in part also been the result of being linked to a woman who had no interest in him from seven years of age.

T'Pring's reasons for rejecting him had seemed perfectly logical the way she had presented them. He had been unwilling to confront her over her real reasons, over the things she had not said. She had called him a "legend" when what she meant was "renegade." She had preferred Ston, a full Vulcan. She had claimed to have no wish to be the consort of a legend, when what she meant was "not with half a human."

The fact remained that for twenty three years, someone who wanted nothing to do with him had been linked to his mind, and he had been well aware of it. He had been equally as disinterested in her. Something like that was not easily dismissed. In fairness he should have found the strength to end it years before the disaster of their attempted marriage. He had defied his father and his clan over far less.

Vulcans cared little for marriages made from love or mutual attraction. The link was made at the age of seven with the intent that neither party should die and that their cycles would coincide. Unfortunately it didn't always work out. It would not help his renegade status on Vulcan that he had married an outworlder, a hybrid like himself, who was six years his junior.

Daphne's unconditional adoration had taken him some time to accept. Only his unconditional adoration of her had kept him trying. When the darkness and heated lust had finally receded enough for coherent thought, he had deeply regretted the aftermath of that first few hours of fierce ravenous madness. When he had finally calmed enough to actually look at his wife he found that dark bruises had been raised not just on her wrists, but on her hips and thighs as well. There was at least one raw, raised mark where her neck joined her shoulder that looked suspiciously like it had been made by his teeth.

Yet she had somehow been content with this …_act_, one that he considered closer to rape than the expression of extreme intimacy they usually shared. He had lifted her wrist to place soft kisses on the dark welts. _I'm sorry _had hung in the air between them.

She shrugged it off, though she allowed the soft kisses for the thrill they were causing elsewhere. Calmly she had informed him that if he could see his own back and shoulders, he might not feel so guilty over a few bruises. Shifting the muscles in his back he had nearly winced. He arched an eyebrow at her and she shrugged again.

"I gave you permission, ashayam. I opened to the shon-ha-lok willingly. Had I wanted you to stop, I would have clawed you somewhere else," she told him. Her voice dropped to a silky purr, "I'm not as helpless as you want to believe I am."

Daphne was a trained Star Fleet officer. He had no real doubts that if she had wanted him to stop, she would have stopped him. Her fighting skills were the equal of any he had seen. He had no doubts that if Daphne had needed to defend herself, she would have kicked his genitals into his throat. As his chosen bond mate, he would have been helpless to stop her. She had the right to refuse him.

"I hate that you are in pain," she had whispered softly," and I hate that this threatens your life, but I also have to admit that there has been something… intoxicating about having you so out of control."

Then she had leaned forward to lightly lick and place tender kisses on the crescent shaped wounds on his shoulder, moving finally to feathering kisses along his neck, and he had worked his way from the bruises on her wrists up her arm and slowly down her body. By the time he got to the dark marks on the inside of her thighs they had both forgotten about control and restraint. They had tumbled once more into unbridled wildness that ended with her clinging to him, wracked with hard, shuddering spasms as he snarled in triumph and ….

_he wasn't sure what he had expected of a true plak tow…. Whatever it was it hadn't been this… blinding brilliance and coruscating power…. pulse pounding…. so hard he felt he might shatter…. crying out her name as he spilled into the willing, throbbing vessel of her body…_._pain and pleasure too great to be contained….._

Her broken voice crying his name had rung in his fragmented senses for some time after that; as had the way she curled up with trusting abandon, linked her fingers through his and held onto him tightly. He had collapsed beside her, panting, as the beast coiled up inside and lay snarling but sated for the moment.

Dragging coherence from the threat of unconsciousness he delicately tested their mental link and found it only incandescent with the aftermath of pleasure. Certainly she had shown nothing but willingness, patience, even eagerness, over the last few days. Raised on Vulcan, Daphne had learned early to be reserved and quiet in public. But, behind closed doors, her hot-blooded Thracian heritage often came surging to the surface. Thracians were vivacious people, embracing life with a passion renowned throughout the galaxy. Though they rejected mating for life as a general rule, it was said that those females who did accept a psychic/empathic life mate became extremely powerful.

He had personal experience to the truth of that now.

She had granted him access to her body – as flexible as engineering conduit - and initiated things in ways he had never imagined – or thought possible. She had also somehow taken care of all his needs so he hadn't just collapsed under the physical stress. He didn't know if it was making the fever in his blood better or worse. At the moment he didn't care. At this point he could keep the beast inside leashed for very short periods of time, unlike in the beginning, when they had quickly outstripped the best efforts of African lions.

Now, days later, it was still all he could do at times to continue breathing when his own heart and lungs threatened to destroy him. Control, even in intimate moments with his wife, had never been an issue. Like all Vulcans, he had almost supernatural control over his body. He could go for hours, even climax without ejaculating, so that prolonged ecstasy between them was the norm.

Under siege by the plak-tow, he had learned to focus his control outward, on his link to his bond mate, which was the only thing that seemed to keep the roiling agony at bay. The times he had tried to make some helpless form of apology to her, she had simply pulled him down on top of her and kissed him silent.

And that times he had been exhausted enough to let her lead, until he found himself pinned beneath her, trapped in wet heat and reveling in this proof of her desire for him. Then they were lost to the wildness of an ancient rite as she dragged him into the flames with her.

He had always thought she was beautiful, a sculpture of flesh and gold, but somehow never more so than now, wearing nothing but her silky pale gold skin, the stunning firebird tattoo that graced most of her torso, and her caramel hair, resting with her head in the hollow of his shoulder and radiating reassurance and contentment. She created a vision in her pleasure that he held onto – head thrown back, lips slightly parted, eyes closed, crying out his name like a prayer. But there was nothing, _nothing_ he had cherished more in the last few days than watching those serene golden eyes shift, flaring for the briefest of seconds into the wild, unrestrained flames that licked beneath the surface in the moment just before they closed in pleasure. A flash, nothing more, never more, in which control utterly shattered and in that moment she was everything beautiful he had ever hoped to experience.

She stirred in his arms then and when he looked down she pressed upwards to brush a kiss against his mouth. Involuntarily his arms tightened around her and he asked for more. She opened eagerly to the inquiring pressure and for a moment they kissed in slow controllable passion. Hands began wandering of their own volition.

When she slid deft fingers down the length of the erection that had quickly reasserted itself he pulled back abruptly, his head swirling in a brief sense of vertigo. Gathering the fraying edges of his control he gasped her name on the next ragged breath he could draw.

"Daphne?"

Spock looked down in to her face and when she looked up he nearly climaxed then and there at the burning lust in her eyes.

With a deliciously wicked smile she said, "You're not exactly shielding your thoughts just now, love."

He tried to speak but her hand had resumed its teasing, light airy touches that almost weren't there at all. If the entire planet had suddenly titled he could not have been more thrown off. Aroused the beast came prowling out of its slumber. In a moment she would have him crying out.

His hands began their own exploration, down her neck and shoulder, caressing her breasts, over the flat rippled muscles of her stomach, down along the join of her hip and leg where a muscle always rippled in response to his touch, along the silky skin of her inner thigh only to glide back up and begin again. She collapsed into incoherence, sensually writhing against him, begging, pleading and pleasing him at the same time.

Linked mind to mind there was never any need for words, but Daphne sometimes spoke nonetheless, in breathless tones that sent bolts of urgent need from his ear to his brain and from there rocketing, throbbing, to his groin.

"_Please…yes…there….now…gods, Spock….."_

This time it was less like being burned in a wildfire, more like riding a sweet, wild wave of ecstasy that crested again and again. Spock finally collapsed again, onto his back, sheltering her once more his arms.

He was suddenly so exhausted he felt as if he was being physically dragged away into that place where sleep reigned. Vaguely he was aware of Daphne's voice, saying something, but it only sounded to him like the soothing, cooling winds that sometimes flowed out of the mountains in the summer. He tried to focus on it but could not resist the pull and, mindless, he went sliding into sweet peaceful oblivion.


	6. Chapter 6

Spock did not come awake with the instant alertness instilled in him by Vulcan training and twenty five years in Star Fleet. Instead it was more like climbing up a steep wall in a fog bank. He had to pause as he climbed, resting, waiting and all the while wondering what this incredible weight was that wanted to drag him back down.

Eventually he realized the weight was his own body. At least it no longer felt like it wanted to kill him.

He opened his eyes reluctantly. Sunlight stabbed at him through the skylight on the roof and he blinked painfully for a moment until his eyes adjusted to the light. When they did, he looked up to find Daphne seated beside him, dressed in a light green shift and simply watching him intently. He gazed back at her; not at all unaware of how the shimmering fabric clung to her body just enough to hint at those delicious parts of her that were now for his eyes only.

"What time is it?" he asked, unused to being so disoriented.

"It is just after midmorning, on Tam'a-t'ved," she supplied. When he arched a quizzical eyebrow at the day she named, Daphne only smiled, "You probably lost track of time; and you slept for the last twelve hours."

"I will be much relieved to hear that it is still the month of ta'Krat at least?" he asked, which made her laugh.

"Yes, we've been on Vulcan about eight days. Here at the summer house for about five," She didn't tell him just how 'asleep' he had been – still as a stone, barely breathing, he had hardly moved so much as an eyelash. She had almost suspected a self induced catatonia. "How do you feel?" she asked.

Spock experimentally attempted to move several muscles and joints by fractions of inches.

"Do you remember the ground war that broke out on Capella when then they signed their treaty with the Federation instead of the Klingon Empire?" he asked.

"You mean the ground battle where you fell backwards off a cliff and nearly broke your back, after some extended hours of hand to hand fighting with an army of Klingons? I'm unlikely to forget that event." she said it lightly, but the memory was painful. The fall would have killed a human.

"I feel like that again, perhaps slightly worse," he answered.

Daphne smiled again, in sympathy, "Perhaps you now have a reference for the term 'hangover'?" She suggested.

"Perhaps," he agreed.

"At least we can stay here for a few more days, without incident; and you won't have to spend those days confined to Sickbay verbally sparring with McCoy. Are you hungry?"

"Ravenous," he replied, all the while thinking that the kitchen and any source of food seemed much too far away to be attainable. The thought of attempting a verbal battle with McCoy made him ache with renewed fatigue. He reached for her hand. "What about you? Are you all right?"

She felt the tingle of renewal along the mental bond that linked them. She was grateful to have it back.

"Nothing that a little salve and a hypospray of muscle relaxant didn't take care of. Would you like to try the hypospray to see if it works for you?"

He shook his head, "I need the mental discipline, to get under control again. Besides, whatever is in it that helped you is likely to make me violently ill."

There was too much truth in that. Their mixed anatomy did not handle any kind of medication well and what worked for her rarely had the same effect on him.

"Do you want me to get us some food?" she asked.

"No," he said, pulling her down beside him, "I would like to just lie here with you for a little while." _Without feeling like I am going to shatter into a million blazing pieces, _he thought_, without having something beyond my control driving us both to the brink of madness, without my life hanging on the edge of a cliff from which only you can save me._

Daphne settled beside him, curled into him, rested her hand on his waist just below his heart. He tucked her under his chin so that her hair brushed softly against him.

"Daphne?" His voice was his again, the dulcet baritone that made her shiver, the one that always sounded like a bedroom voice. "Are you sure you're not hurt? Do you want a Healer?"

"I can't be the only one who spent time recently with a Vulcan in Pon Farr. Do they all need Healers?" she asked.

Spock's eyes dropped and became unfocused. Softly he said, "Some of them will."

Daphne put the back of her hand against his cheek, encouraged him to look up at her again. "You didn't hurt me, not in any way. You must know that?"

"I….," he hesitated and then said very very quietly, "I don't remember most of it." That too was disorienting. His memory was formidable.

"What do you remember?" The caring concern in her voice was obvious.

He didn't speak, but their psychic bond began to vibrate. He remembered her, her body, the way she looked, the way she tasted. He remembered pain trying to destroy him from the inside out, passion in jumbled bits and pieces obscured by a violent red haze. He remembered that he would have happily killed anyone else who had entered the house and not given it another thought, a memory he shared only with extreme reluctance. He remembered the way it felt inside her, safe and joyous.

That was all.

She sighed, "Your mother said you wouldn't remember much."

"My…my… m-mother?" In the six and half years they had been together, Daphne had never heard Spock stammer. "You talked to my _m-mother_ about this?"

She gave him a frank stare, "Is there another human woman who has dealt with this that you would prefer I speak to? _You_ couldn't tell me exactly what it would be like. I'm not sure there is a Vulcan anywhere who would have spoken to me about it. Spock, it was your _life_," she emphasized this as if it explained everything. "I would have crawled down into the Abyss on my hand and knees and spoken to Haedes himself if I had to."

He started to speak at least three times, closing his mouth again as he reconsidered his words. Seeking out his mother for advice was utterly logical. He should be finished enough with the blood fever to appreciate logic again.

Finally he sighed and said, "You don't believe in Haedes. You don't believe in any of the Thracian gods, for all that you seem to cry out to them quite frequently."

She smiled lazily, arching her back so she brushed against him. "Whose fault is that?" she asked, a spark of desire flaring in her golden eyes. She leaned against him, "Let me show you what _I_ remember."

Spock almost slammed up a mental shield –not really wanting to know what he had done to her - but caught himself in time and let her fill him with her memories. Perhaps she filtered those memories, because all he felt were images of a powerful, sensual male, one that belonged to her and filled her with ecstasy and desire, one that was so beautiful it made her breathless to look at him; one he was shocked to find she still desired and, in fact, was weak for this very moment.

To have awoken from that brutal red mist to find her caring for him, willing to lay down with him and be held had given him peace and sweet relief. To find that she wanted him –tenderly, sensually, and intimately– was more than he had ever dared hope.

Two surprises in short order and logic fled again. His breath caught.

"Daphne," he whispered and she waited for him to continue before realizing he wasn't going to. He had simply wanted to say it.

Her tawny eyes smiled as she leaned over to kiss him. "Spock," she said softly. There was no mistaking the intent of her kiss.

"You can't possibly…" he began, stopped when her hand came to rest lightly just below his rib cage, over his heart.

"Want you?" she finished. Her summery voice had dropped to a shy, uncertain whisper. She lowered her eyes.

His eyebrow knitted in confusion. "After this last week?"

She looked up again, from under gold-tipped lashes. "Especially after this last week. I… need it to be my idea. I need to be with _you,_" her words were not what she intended and she broke off abruptly. He studied her closely, having never before seen her looking so lost.

But words were not the only way they communicated. In fact, as with all Vulcan bondings words were the least of the ways they communicated. Daphne may seem lost, but she was not alone. Along the bond he understood. She needed something slow and sweet. She needed him to be passive and surrender in the same way as she, to bring their relationship back to the equal state it usually held.

She had started wanting him the moment he opened his eyes and she had seen only Spock looking back at her.

He dropped over onto his back, laced the fingers of his right hand through hers, pairing the first two in the Vulcan way. The sensitive telepathic receptors in his fingertips sent his willingness. He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers, her palm and then her wrist. Holding her eyes with his, he said softly, "Then take me."

She shivered, as along their bond he made sure she knew he was offering not just his body but his heart.

"But you hurt," she protested, trying to drag her hand back, "you said you were still sore, hungry….."

A quick tug on her hand and a deft shift of his hips had her straddling him. Then he let go, laid his hands quietly at his sides. "Then I'll be still," he said, "I won't move. Daphne," his voice was a silken sigh, "Take me. T'du esh'm, ha'kiv'm, katra'm."

She hesitated only a moment before pulling her shift over head and casting it to the side. Leaning forward, she rested her forehead against his for a moment, soft golden hair falling around them like a curtain. She kissed him, his forehead, his temple, the sharp angle of his cheekbone, the space between his wing-swept brows. By the time she got to his mouth, tenderness and desire were spilling across their bond like a gift.

He had learned long ago that resisting his empathic wife when she unleashed the fullness of her passion on him was useless. Now he wondered why it had ever occurred to him to resist at all.

Her fingers began tracing lines of fiery ice down his body. The first time she had ever touched him like this he had been amazed by the delicate strength in her agile hands. Her mouth followed after, hotter and wetter and more insistent, finding all the pressure points that usually made him arch and gasp. He fought the urge now, willing himself to submission.

She teased the soft skin beneath his ear, took his earlobe between her teeth and tugged gently before trailing her tongue up to the sensitive point, making him shiver. For some reason unknown to him she found his ears unbearably sensual and that feeling fed back to him whenever she decided to indulge it. She moved slowly down along the strong line of his jaw, under his chin, down his neck to the hollow of his throat, across his collarbone, down to the taut tender flesh over his chest, down the centerline and contours of his muscular stomach.

Daphne touched and teased every spot she knew would drive him wild until he was trying not to writhe, hands fisted in the sheets as he held to his promise to lie still. She slipped further down, pressing against his thigh with her knee so that he opened his legs and she knelt between them. He clenched his teeth and willed his body not to move as her lips and hands followed the line of his hip down to its logical conclusion. One hand closed tight over his hardened, arching shaft and moved in slow rhythmic strokes. Her mouth closed over the head of it, tongue circling, licking.

A soft moan escaped him and his hand flew to her hair, touching gently. She teased him forever, a lifetime, just enough to keep him on edge but not enough for release. He groaned once, tried to thrust upwards. Her hands clamped down on his hips, holding him down.

"You said you would be still," her warm breath shivered over his skin.

He brushed her hair back, "That was before I knew there was slow torture involved," he murmured, vaguely shocked he still had any coherent vocabulary." I _do_ have limitations, k'diwa."

She rubbed her cheek against his shaft, smiling wickedly. "After the last few days you want me to believe that?"

His answer was lost in another deep groan as her mouth descended on him again. The last of his rationality slipped away and he let it go without a thought. She moved to straddle him finally, sheathing him inside liquid silk. He put his hands on her thighs as lightly as he could, forcing himself to continue to submit, watching her ride him to her pleasure. As she lost herself in an erotic haze he felt his body going wild, wanting to roll over, touch her, taste her, and hold her beneath him until he found release.

Sheer force of will kept him still. All the control stripped from him by the plak-tow had returned. In its way, that was almost as arousing as the sweet slow movements of the woman above him. He ground his teeth against the need to explode until at last she froze for a moment, crying out his name as she crested in crushing waves and took him with her.

Daphne collapsed onto him, melted. The only movement she made was to bring her legs together, between his, trapping him effectively within her so that the aftershocks of her pleasure could continue to caress him. Limp and shaking she buried her head against his neck and shoulder. His own muscles quivering violently, Spock put his arms around her, content to hold her.

Gradually her breathing evened out and he realized she was becoming almost boneless on top of him. Her weight grew heavier.

"Daphne, _k'diwa_," he whispered, "You can't sleep like this."

She stirred, nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder. "Can too," she murmured.

He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, put his hands around her waist and pushed gently. Prodding her just as gently along their bond line, he finally got her to lift her head and look at him. Fatigue, sheer exhaustion, shadowed her face. She must have worn herself out caring for him, satisfying him, waiting for him to wake up. She must have been running on pure adrenaline for days. Now that she was assured he was fine and the danger was passed, Daphne was ready to collapse.

Calling on Vulcan strength and ignoring muscles that protested the movement, he flipped them both until they were lying side by side. She curled up against him tight and sighed contentedly. Her hand slipped from his hip, settled naturally at the junction of his legs and cupped him in a gesture of intimacy and trust. The gesture and the sigh pierced his heart with gratitude and love.

He brushed his fingertips over her temple and sent one strong, insistent thought through their bond. /Sleep./

Outside Vulcan's sun climbed into the blazing red sky, unseen by either Spock or Daphne as they held each other safe and secure inside their sheltered universe.


End file.
